Progress Software Corporation went through a lot in the past two years, including financial turmoil, leadership changes, and a comprehensive restructure. The company also shifted from producing several software products to one.

In October 2013, Progress Software hosted its annual user conference. This year the conference served as the company’s coming-out party, and Progress Software needed to prove to customers and investors that it could make a successful comeback.

For its work in raising significant awareness of the event and establishing Progress Software as a leading company in the software industry, LEWIS PR claimed first place in the Best Event Marketing category of Ragan’s 2014 PR Daily Awards.

LEWIS employed both traditional and social media to promote the conference, as well as content marketing. Three months before the conference, LEWIS published sneak-peek blog posts, targeted LinkedIn promotions to specific audiences, and hosted a series of Twitter contests, including a retweet-to-win contest.

The day of the event, LEWIS live tweeted conference sessions, published blog posts with event highlights, and posted videos from the event on social media. The team also had a Twitter concierge, who answered conference-specific questions from the Progress Software Twitter handle. LEWIS also coordinated press interviews.

After the event, LEWIS repurposed content from the event and distributed it through social media.

By the end of the event, LEWIS landed double the amount of press attendance that it had hoped to secure, and got the event hashtag, #PRGS13, trending on Twitter.